A landmark moment for the burgeoning South Asian art market was made today when M.F. Husain’s monumental 1954 painting Untitled (Gram Yatra) sold for $13.7m (with fees) in New York, nearly quadruple its high estimate of $3.5m. That result set a new record for Modern Indian art at auction, as well as Indian painting. Leading Christie’s South Asian Modern and contemporary auction, it almost doubles the previous record for this category, which was achieved in 2023 for Amrita Sher Gil’s The Storyteller (1937), at Saffronart in Mumbai.

This is the second-highest price achieved for a work of art from South Asia across all time periods, after the $24.6m paid for a 12th-century black stone figure of a bodhisattva from northeastern India, sold at Christie’s New York in 2017.

The record-setting Husain was chased by five bidders, according to a Christie’s spokesperson, and sold to an institution, bidding on the phone with Nishad Avari, the head of department for South Asian Modern and contemporary art at Christie’s. The auction house declined to reveal the institution.

A mural-sized work comprised of 13 panels, it is “the most significant work by Husain to come to the public market in a generation”, Avari says. The 1950s are Husain’s most valuable decade and the previous secondary market record-holder for the artist, the Untitled (Reincarnation) that sold for $3.2m last September, dates from 1957. During these years Husain travelled extensively around both India and the world, and the various panels of Untitled (Gram Yatra), each a separate vignette, detail a wealth of global influences, from Paul Klee and Pablo Picasso to Chinese calligraphy. The work’s unofficial title in Hindi, “Gram Yatra”, means village pilgrimage and it depicts quotidian scenes of pastoral and rural life across the country as Husain sought to capture the reality of India in the years following its independence.

Popularly known as the Volodarsky Husain after its former owner, the Ukrainian-born and Norway-based doctor Leon Elias Volodarsky, the work has been largely unseen for most of its 71 year history. Voldardsky bought the work during a posting in Delhi. Following his death in 1964, his estate bequeathed it to the Oslo University Hospital, his employer, where it was placed in a private corridor, out of public view. The hospital consigned the painting to today’s sale. Securing the work has been a “13-year journey, which is my entire career at Christie’s”, Avari says. Proceeds from the sale will go towards establishing a training centre for future doctors.

The total sale made $24.8m (with fees), more than twice its $11.7m high estimate (calculated without fees). The impressive result comes as auction totals for larger regions of the market, from London to China, are witnessing a downturn. Indeed, as Avari points out, this Husain is the “most expensive work to be sold at any auction house in 2025” thus far, a notable achievement considering this includes evening sales conducted earlier this month in London.

While acknowledging this moment as “phenomenal” for the field of South Asian art, Avari is wary of viewing this as an opportunity for auction houses to quickly begin lifting estimates for Indian art. “We raise prices based on sustained trends rather than unique achievements. This work was truly one of a kind.”